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Blackouts
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Fiction (2023)From the bestselling author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories--personal and collective.
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay--playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized--has a project to pass along to this new narrator. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator trade stories--moments of joy and oblivion--and resurrect lost loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?
Inspired by Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pedro Páramo, Voodoo Macbeth, the book at its own center and the woman who created it, oral histories, and many more texts, images, and influences, Justin Torres's Blackouts is a work of fiction that sees through the inventions of history and narrative. An extraordinary work of creative imagination, it insists that we look long and steady at the world we have inherited and the world we have made--a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth.
Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay--playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized--has a project to pass along to this new narrator. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator trade stories--moments of joy and oblivion--and resurrect lost loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?
Inspired by Kiss of the Spider Woman, Pedro Páramo, Voodoo Macbeth, the book at its own center and the woman who created it, oral histories, and many more texts, images, and influences, Justin Torres's Blackouts is a work of fiction that sees through the inventions of history and narrative. An extraordinary work of creative imagination, it insists that we look long and steady at the world we have inherited and the world we have made--a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth.
306 pages, Hardcover
First published October 10, 2023
1486 people are currently reading
80964 people want to read
About the author
Justin Torres
14 books1,089 followersJUSTIN TORRES grew up in upstate New York. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Glimmer Train, and other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he is a recipient of the Rolón United States Artist Fellowship in Literature, and is now a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He has worked as a farmhand, a dog-walker, a creative writing teacher, and a bookseller.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,278 reviews
December 7, 2023
I had a hectic week(s) but I want to write a few words about this one while it is still fresh in my mind.
OK, where should I begin. It is a very weird story, an experimental novel if you want to call it like that. A book about real people with fictionalised experiences who is made to look real. A young gay man goes to a place called the Palace to seek an old man, Juan, also gay, who is dying. They met in a mental health facility 10 years before. While “Nene” (the ways Juan calls him) takes care of the sick man they tell each other their life stories. We will be revealed that Luis owns a book about Sexual Deviants. The words are almost all blackened, very few remain readable. Those words, when read together on a page, form a sort of poem. The book is real, but the life the author imagines for one of its researchers, Jan Gay, it is not. So, we have three life stories, photos of those blackened poems and additional photos, some quite explicit, who are there to suggest that the story is real. Like Sebald did, and not only.
As I wrote, it is an odd one, from a structural point of view but also from its content. It gave me a dreamlike feeling.
I listened to the audiobook and read an Arc provided by Netgalley. I am glad I had the e-book because I could see the pictures. However, the font was too small for the book extracts and I could not decipher anything. In the audiobook, the poems were read by the author, while the dialogue between the two characters are voiced by Ozzie Rodriguez and Torian Brackett. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Torian again since I already enjoyed his narration in the Booker prize shortlisted book, If I Survive You.
***
I am still reading the novel but I just found out it won the National Book Award for best novel. It was the only title that attracted me so it seems I have an eye for winners :) it is an oddball but a beautiful book. More to come after I’m done.
OK, where should I begin. It is a very weird story, an experimental novel if you want to call it like that. A book about real people with fictionalised experiences who is made to look real. A young gay man goes to a place called the Palace to seek an old man, Juan, also gay, who is dying. They met in a mental health facility 10 years before. While “Nene” (the ways Juan calls him) takes care of the sick man they tell each other their life stories. We will be revealed that Luis owns a book about Sexual Deviants. The words are almost all blackened, very few remain readable. Those words, when read together on a page, form a sort of poem. The book is real, but the life the author imagines for one of its researchers, Jan Gay, it is not. So, we have three life stories, photos of those blackened poems and additional photos, some quite explicit, who are there to suggest that the story is real. Like Sebald did, and not only.
As I wrote, it is an odd one, from a structural point of view but also from its content. It gave me a dreamlike feeling.
I listened to the audiobook and read an Arc provided by Netgalley. I am glad I had the e-book because I could see the pictures. However, the font was too small for the book extracts and I could not decipher anything. In the audiobook, the poems were read by the author, while the dialogue between the two characters are voiced by Ozzie Rodriguez and Torian Brackett. I was pleasantly surprised to hear Torian again since I already enjoyed his narration in the Booker prize shortlisted book, If I Survive You.
***
I am still reading the novel but I just found out it won the National Book Award for best novel. It was the only title that attracted me so it seems I have an eye for winners :) it is an oddball but a beautiful book. More to come after I’m done.
October 13, 2023
Blackouts is Justin Torres's latest, more than a decade in the making. It is outstanding. Formally, the book is reminiscent of the Argentinian novel, El beso de la mujer araña (Kiss of the Spider Woman), manifested here as a conversation between two queer men, from different generations. This reorients the novel into a form that takes its cues from a type of oral tradition, reclaimed and repurposed here. The friendship between the men takes center stage, the conversations an inculturation of a sort, a passing of knowledge and experience from one to the other. This can be read as a retelling of queer history itself, both a deconstruction of historical understandings of identity and sexuality, as well as an exploration of the way those concepts were constructed in the first place. This is a deeply intertextual book, engaging with a range of texts that includes the 1941 publication "Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns" and several iterations of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). We see the boundary between normal and abnormal defined historically with a colonialist agenda, pathologizing bodies and experiences that are non-white, non-masculine, non-cis, etc. Sexuality, race, class, masculinity, and other themes are examined. It's also a story about love, friendship, aging, and family. The dialogue is so sharp and yet so personal. There is a generosity and tenderness to this story that is exquisite. The title is in reference to redactions used in blackout poetry, a practice Torres employs throughout this volume. Thanks to the US publisher, FSG, for making a review copy available in advance of publication.
July 17, 2024
experimental novel!!!!!!!!!
i fall for the gimmick of mixed media every time, even if it doesn't seem strictly necessary to the story or even good. that was not the case in this book, and i had a great time.
the blackout poems were strong and powerful, which made up for the fact that sometimes the more traditional novel parts felt alternately a bit saccharine or a bit full of itself.
bottom line: literary, unique award-winners get me to forgive a lot.
i fall for the gimmick of mixed media every time, even if it doesn't seem strictly necessary to the story or even good. that was not the case in this book, and i had a great time.
the blackout poems were strong and powerful, which made up for the fact that sometimes the more traditional novel parts felt alternately a bit saccharine or a bit full of itself.
bottom line: literary, unique award-winners get me to forgive a lot.
October 31, 2023
When Justin Torres worked as a bookseller, he was assigned to deal with a collection of donated books most likely from the home of someone recently dead. What he found in these boxes were works by writers like Radclyffe Hall, Jean Genet, and a smattering of “vintage erotica…gay smut and lesbian smut in equal quantities.” Torres started to imagine the person who might have owned this library: someone queer, someone who’d come of age and lived through a series of cultural moments that echoed broader queer histories in America – and maybe beyond.
Torres’s unconventional and exceptionally-haunting novel builds on his fantasy of this unknown person and their carefully-compiled “archive of voices” but also draws on a lesser-known set of books found buried among the others. These books were highly influential in the treatment and ongoing stigmatization of queer people. Published in the 1940s, Sex Variants by George W. Henry rested on years of field and experimental research. An attempt to map and find the origins of queer identities that Henry classified as arrested development, a potential threat to heterosexual norms and so-called “healthy” reproduction. But the origins of his study lay somewhere very different in the work of Jan Gay (Helen Reitman) a lesbian activist who interviewed over 300 women for her study and celebration of queer women. Without academic, medical credentials Gay couldn’t find a publisher, so by happenstance became linked to a group including Henry looking for material on queer lives but for vastly different purposes.
Torres’s narrative takes the form of an ongoing conversation between two men, one young and nameless, the other Juan who’s aging and on the verge of death. Juan’s mix of death-bed confession and intimate web of memories is intermingled with references to literature to art and poetry. But Juan’s also someone who spent part of his childhood with Jan Gay and her then-lover, artist and children’s book illustrator Zhenya Gay (Eleanor Byrnes). Jan and Zhenya’s experiences act as a way of thinking through queer pasts, devastating losses and fragile gains. The young man known only as “Nene” and Juan are alone together in a dilapidated room in a boarding-house known as the Palace – the reason for the name is revealed in the course of time. Nene cares for Juan and they gradually share the most intimate details of their lives.
This is a tender, complex, beautifully-written piece interwoven with ideas taken from literature and psychology. Torres’s take on the cultural and social sciences that repressed and sought to destroy successions of queer lives echoes ideas that trace back to theorists like Foucault. But Torres’s story’s never overly dense or daunting, instead it’s fluid, moving and sometimes visceral, with a fable-like quality. Torres’s prose is juxtaposed with images - including elements of Zhenya Gay’s artwork - and a series of outtakes from Henry’s study but each page under erasure. An erasure which is also an act of radical restoration and reclamation, lines and words blacked out which shift and refuse Henry’s intended meanings, teasing out the desires and underlying thoughts of the queer men and women subjected to his damning analysis. Torres’s approach also delves into the experiences of his characters as people with Puerto Rican heritage living in America subjected to damaging stereotypes, their histories and heritage distorted and othered. Intense, rich, and memorable.
Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Granta for an ARC
Rating: 4.5
Torres’s unconventional and exceptionally-haunting novel builds on his fantasy of this unknown person and their carefully-compiled “archive of voices” but also draws on a lesser-known set of books found buried among the others. These books were highly influential in the treatment and ongoing stigmatization of queer people. Published in the 1940s, Sex Variants by George W. Henry rested on years of field and experimental research. An attempt to map and find the origins of queer identities that Henry classified as arrested development, a potential threat to heterosexual norms and so-called “healthy” reproduction. But the origins of his study lay somewhere very different in the work of Jan Gay (Helen Reitman) a lesbian activist who interviewed over 300 women for her study and celebration of queer women. Without academic, medical credentials Gay couldn’t find a publisher, so by happenstance became linked to a group including Henry looking for material on queer lives but for vastly different purposes.
Torres’s narrative takes the form of an ongoing conversation between two men, one young and nameless, the other Juan who’s aging and on the verge of death. Juan’s mix of death-bed confession and intimate web of memories is intermingled with references to literature to art and poetry. But Juan’s also someone who spent part of his childhood with Jan Gay and her then-lover, artist and children’s book illustrator Zhenya Gay (Eleanor Byrnes). Jan and Zhenya’s experiences act as a way of thinking through queer pasts, devastating losses and fragile gains. The young man known only as “Nene” and Juan are alone together in a dilapidated room in a boarding-house known as the Palace – the reason for the name is revealed in the course of time. Nene cares for Juan and they gradually share the most intimate details of their lives.
This is a tender, complex, beautifully-written piece interwoven with ideas taken from literature and psychology. Torres’s take on the cultural and social sciences that repressed and sought to destroy successions of queer lives echoes ideas that trace back to theorists like Foucault. But Torres’s story’s never overly dense or daunting, instead it’s fluid, moving and sometimes visceral, with a fable-like quality. Torres’s prose is juxtaposed with images - including elements of Zhenya Gay’s artwork - and a series of outtakes from Henry’s study but each page under erasure. An erasure which is also an act of radical restoration and reclamation, lines and words blacked out which shift and refuse Henry’s intended meanings, teasing out the desires and underlying thoughts of the queer men and women subjected to his damning analysis. Torres’s approach also delves into the experiences of his characters as people with Puerto Rican heritage living in America subjected to damaging stereotypes, their histories and heritage distorted and othered. Intense, rich, and memorable.
Thanks to Netgalley UK and publisher Granta for an ARC
Rating: 4.5
January 3, 2024
"Not all ambiguities need to be resolved."
"Blackouts is a work of fiction."
National Book Award for Fiction 2023
I think I am the ideal reader for this book.
Firstly, I am all here for experimental fiction. I don't need a plot. I don't expect all the things to work in a book that is trying new things, so I'm more forgiving of some slow moments. Just create some memorable moments along the way.
I am also a Sebald reader. 'Blackouts' follows so much the Sebald formula of intertwining facts, fiction, and photos that it is a huge disappointment to not see his name at all in the discussions of 'Blackouts'.
I am also gay, so when I've read the first page, I could see gold. It instantly made sense, the erasures (blackouts) of a real medical book from the '50s about homosexuality in order to create a new gay history, a more poetic and real one that the medical community from that time was able to create by experimenting on us.
"If I'm nostalgic, it's not because I was happy in those precarious years. But I was deeply moved by our resourcefulness."
But...
Halfway through, I was surprised that the book lost me. Something didn't work. The conception didn't materialize into a meaningful story. Despite the poetic language, it all felt academic, which is a little sad considering the real people on which the book is constructed.
I was shocked. I've tried to resist this realization. I re-read some parts. I put it aside and gave it time. It didn't work.The end was so uneventful that I literally missed it because of the way the book is constructed.
Justin Torres has actually two chapters after the end in which he explains the sources of the events and of the images. He even makes the mistake of quoting himself in the same book. Every mystery was completely lost at that point for me.
So, I still think that I am the ideal reader for this book, but it didn't work. I can still appreciate its ambitions and experiments, but emotionally I was not connected.
"Blackouts is a work of fiction."
National Book Award for Fiction 2023
I think I am the ideal reader for this book.
Firstly, I am all here for experimental fiction. I don't need a plot. I don't expect all the things to work in a book that is trying new things, so I'm more forgiving of some slow moments. Just create some memorable moments along the way.
I am also a Sebald reader. 'Blackouts' follows so much the Sebald formula of intertwining facts, fiction, and photos that it is a huge disappointment to not see his name at all in the discussions of 'Blackouts'.
I am also gay, so when I've read the first page, I could see gold. It instantly made sense, the erasures (blackouts) of a real medical book from the '50s about homosexuality in order to create a new gay history, a more poetic and real one that the medical community from that time was able to create by experimenting on us.
"If I'm nostalgic, it's not because I was happy in those precarious years. But I was deeply moved by our resourcefulness."
But...
Halfway through, I was surprised that the book lost me. Something didn't work. The conception didn't materialize into a meaningful story. Despite the poetic language, it all felt academic, which is a little sad considering the real people on which the book is constructed.
I was shocked. I've tried to resist this realization. I re-read some parts. I put it aside and gave it time. It didn't work.The end was so uneventful that I literally missed it because of the way the book is constructed.
Justin Torres has actually two chapters after the end in which he explains the sources of the events and of the images. He even makes the mistake of quoting himself in the same book. Every mystery was completely lost at that point for me.
So, I still think that I am the ideal reader for this book, but it didn't work. I can still appreciate its ambitions and experiments, but emotionally I was not connected.
Want to read
November 16, 2023Justin Torres, whose book I have not read, took home the National Book Award for Fiction. The entire class of 2023 nominees stood up together and supported the following statement being read:
For this, Author Torres cut his chance-of-a-lifetime shot at having the spotlight to himself very short. Even if you don't ever want to read it, I think y'all should join me in buying Blackouts as a way to support him and his message of humanitarian action.
On behalf of the finalists, we oppose the ongoing bombardment of Gaza and call for a humanitarian cease-fire to address the urgent humanitarian needs of Palestinian civilians, particularly children. We oppose antisemitism and anti-Palestinian sentiment and Islamophobia equally, accepting the human dignity of all parties, knowing that further bloodshed does nothing to secure lasting peace in the region.
For this, Author Torres cut his chance-of-a-lifetime shot at having the spotlight to himself very short. Even if you don't ever want to read it, I think y'all should join me in buying Blackouts as a way to support him and his message of humanitarian action.
December 20, 2023
If a single book could define the mental state of my early 20s, it would be Justin Torres' debut masterpiece, We the Animals. I read it in the spring of 2012 and still remember being mesmerized by its raw, grim, magical encapsulation of everything I was dealing with at the time. Like other fans, I've desperately awaited a follow-up novel. Now, over a decade later, that moment has finally arrived with Blackouts.
Miraculously, once again, Torres has written something which mirrors my current mental state. Are we both in the same psychic vortex? This is getting freaky! Perhaps when I look back in another decade, I will say this book defines my 30s.
Blackouts is a vaguely autobiographical, creatively historical, occasionally psychedelic, experimental novel which is primarily a dialogue between two gay men who are residents in some kind of hospital—though it's not clear what kind. Juan is near-death, a fictional relative of the real lesbian sex researcher, Jan Gay. The other is younger and unnamed. One wonders if he is meant to be a version of Torres himself.
Through memory-sharing and mutual comfort, their conversations ultimately climax in a powerful depiction of queer mortality. This is a topic I'm especially interested in right now, particularly with historical perspective of someone from Juan's generation and background. I think Torres handles this masterfully, with his lean, powerful sentences and artistic interpretations of psyche. Everybody dies in their own unique way, but there has been little examination of queer deaths beyond the context of AIDS. What goes through the mind of an elderly gay man at the end? What visions does he see? What are his reflections?
Formatting-wise, the novel is also unique for its creative illustrations and blackout poetry from a real historic text, a pre-Kinsey research study on homosexuality. Spookily enough, I am deep into this kind of research myself, from this same era. The excerpts, so brilliantly redacted, were extra poignant to me.
As a short novel, there's not much to complain about. Yes, the middle is a little bloated, but it doesn't go on too long. Yes, Torres intersperses adaptations of his previously published short stories which feels like cheating. But they fit the vibe, and some stories—like "Starve a Rat"—are so gorgeous I will never complain about reading it twice.
If I were to guess, the magic of this novel was probably inspired by necessity. I'm sure his agent (and UCLA) were anxious that their star client would become a has-been if he didn’t release a follow-up to his sensational debut. It does seem Blackouts is comprised of various discarded novels, short stories and screenplays over the last decade, pasted together like decoupage. Be that as it may, the result is a cohesive product which won the National Book Award. So clearly it worked!
All in all, one of the most memorable books I’ve picked up this year and well-worth the wait. But Justin, please don’t make me wait another decade for your next book!
Miraculously, once again, Torres has written something which mirrors my current mental state. Are we both in the same psychic vortex? This is getting freaky! Perhaps when I look back in another decade, I will say this book defines my 30s.
Blackouts is a vaguely autobiographical, creatively historical, occasionally psychedelic, experimental novel which is primarily a dialogue between two gay men who are residents in some kind of hospital—though it's not clear what kind. Juan is near-death, a fictional relative of the real lesbian sex researcher, Jan Gay. The other is younger and unnamed. One wonders if he is meant to be a version of Torres himself.
Through memory-sharing and mutual comfort, their conversations ultimately climax in a powerful depiction of queer mortality. This is a topic I'm especially interested in right now, particularly with historical perspective of someone from Juan's generation and background. I think Torres handles this masterfully, with his lean, powerful sentences and artistic interpretations of psyche. Everybody dies in their own unique way, but there has been little examination of queer deaths beyond the context of AIDS. What goes through the mind of an elderly gay man at the end? What visions does he see? What are his reflections?
Formatting-wise, the novel is also unique for its creative illustrations and blackout poetry from a real historic text, a pre-Kinsey research study on homosexuality. Spookily enough, I am deep into this kind of research myself, from this same era. The excerpts, so brilliantly redacted, were extra poignant to me.
As a short novel, there's not much to complain about. Yes, the middle is a little bloated, but it doesn't go on too long. Yes, Torres intersperses adaptations of his previously published short stories which feels like cheating. But they fit the vibe, and some stories—like "Starve a Rat"—are so gorgeous I will never complain about reading it twice.
If I were to guess, the magic of this novel was probably inspired by necessity. I'm sure his agent (and UCLA) were anxious that their star client would become a has-been if he didn’t release a follow-up to his sensational debut. It does seem Blackouts is comprised of various discarded novels, short stories and screenplays over the last decade, pasted together like decoupage. Be that as it may, the result is a cohesive product which won the National Book Award. So clearly it worked!
All in all, one of the most memorable books I’ve picked up this year and well-worth the wait. But Justin, please don’t make me wait another decade for your next book!
Read
December 10, 2023Winner of the National Book Award, and I found some things to like in Torres' debut, We the Animals, so I gave it a go but this one was a struggle. Two men, one young (called "Nene") and one old (Juan Gay), each with a history at a mental institution, meet and talk. In truth, it may be one man. Either way, lots and lots of dialogue. Or monologue, if you subscribe to the outer-inner voice theory. Some of the discussion surrounds Juan's project involving a book called Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns, but really the episodic sketches drift all over the place.
As I moved deeper into the book, I thought in time more would be at stake, but that wasn't the case. Lots of images, pictures, and erasures of documents embedded throughout, too, but the erasure docs had such small print I gave up on trying to read them. Were some of the sketches more engaging than others? Yes, thankfully, but it's not like a novel where suspense builds.
Why? Because there's no plot, really. I typically like plotless books. I just think the author has to make up for lack of plot in other ways, e.g. with stop-readers-in-their-tracks writing and/or with characters you fully invest in. For me, neither was the case with this book. I didn't find any sentences I just HAD to reread because they were so poetic or original.
That said, a look at the blurbs tells me that lots of people with great literary talent and taste feel otherwise (need I repeat: National Book Award), so I'll chalk it up to my own subjective opinion and move on, tipping my hat to to Justin Torres and saying congrats.
As I moved deeper into the book, I thought in time more would be at stake, but that wasn't the case. Lots of images, pictures, and erasures of documents embedded throughout, too, but the erasure docs had such small print I gave up on trying to read them. Were some of the sketches more engaging than others? Yes, thankfully, but it's not like a novel where suspense builds.
Why? Because there's no plot, really. I typically like plotless books. I just think the author has to make up for lack of plot in other ways, e.g. with stop-readers-in-their-tracks writing and/or with characters you fully invest in. For me, neither was the case with this book. I didn't find any sentences I just HAD to reread because they were so poetic or original.
That said, a look at the blurbs tells me that lots of people with great literary talent and taste feel otherwise (need I repeat: National Book Award), so I'll chalk it up to my own subjective opinion and move on, tipping my hat to to Justin Torres and saying congrats.
October 13, 2023
Even though I loved Torres’ debut WE THE ANIMALS, his new one took me by surprise. This is a complete 180 from that book. Take no prisoners, why don’t you?
BLACKOUTS is an experimental novel that embraces queerness, while also managing to teach/highlight/illustrate/enhance queer history (basically, the takeaway of this book is this: kids, know your history). Torres uses a plethora of various multimedia/techniques to tell this story: graphic sexual encounters, hustler and hookup culture, peer review works, medical documents, blackout poetry, screenplays, doctored photos, POC queer experiences, and much more, I’m sure.
The primary mode of storytelling is between two male friends, who spend their time sharing stories of queerness with one another. One man is young and eager to learn more about life and his queerness. The other is older, on the brink of death but who has lived a full life, which causes him to be a wonderful source of knowledge for his younger friend, who is brewing with so many questions.
This novel is ambitious and extremely overwhelming —there is so much being thrown at you; it’s hard to keep up and digest it all. And that’s what makes it all so exhilarating; that dizzying feeling of your feet not being firmly planted to the ground. You feel like you’re floating; the intoxication of knowing that there are several jewels just dying to be discovered on that second reading.
This book floored me. It is shocking in its gravity and heft. People go on and on about THE NEW LIFE being the queer litfic book of the year (pftt), BLACKOUTS would like a serious word.
BLACKOUTS is an experimental novel that embraces queerness, while also managing to teach/highlight/illustrate/enhance queer history (basically, the takeaway of this book is this: kids, know your history). Torres uses a plethora of various multimedia/techniques to tell this story: graphic sexual encounters, hustler and hookup culture, peer review works, medical documents, blackout poetry, screenplays, doctored photos, POC queer experiences, and much more, I’m sure.
The primary mode of storytelling is between two male friends, who spend their time sharing stories of queerness with one another. One man is young and eager to learn more about life and his queerness. The other is older, on the brink of death but who has lived a full life, which causes him to be a wonderful source of knowledge for his younger friend, who is brewing with so many questions.
This novel is ambitious and extremely overwhelming —there is so much being thrown at you; it’s hard to keep up and digest it all. And that’s what makes it all so exhilarating; that dizzying feeling of your feet not being firmly planted to the ground. You feel like you’re floating; the intoxication of knowing that there are several jewels just dying to be discovered on that second reading.
This book floored me. It is shocking in its gravity and heft. People go on and on about THE NEW LIFE being the queer litfic book of the year (pftt), BLACKOUTS would like a serious word.
February 13, 2025
I actually thought this was a memoir of sorts. Didn’t realize until I got to the end that this is actually fiction.
Some of it may be uncomfortable for some to read. I found it haunting and yearning. The perspective that it's written from makes me want more.
Some of it may be uncomfortable for some to read. I found it haunting and yearning. The perspective that it's written from makes me want more.
November 18, 2023
Queer on every page. The writing hooked me into reading this book quickly: in just a few sittings. The conversations between 'nene' and Juan are hard to step away from. There are no big plot twists or exciting culmination, yet the consistency of the detailed story-telling kept me engaged.
Be prepared to think. Maybe pause reading (not as much as when reading poetry), but I can't compare this writing to anyone else. There is much to be absorbed.
My favorite part is after about mid-book where they each pretend to tell each other a script for their movie: 'Starve a Rat' by nene. Then 'The Opening of a Door' by Juan. They are blueprints of each of their lives.
There are photocopies of pages from Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns by George W. Henry that have much of the text black-lined so that you can read a variation of what was on that page (erasure poetry). The other blackouts are what nene experiences. There are 55 pictures in this book all with references in the notes in the appendix. Many from the book just mentioned, including pictures of some of the people with that book.
This is the story of 'nene' (baby) who is a generation behind Juan, who was raised by Jan Gay, whose father was Ben Reitman. Jan's partner was Zhenya. Our key narrator, nene, tells much of this story, mostly from the bedside of his dying friend Juan. The other names get mentioned during Juan's story ("The Opening of a Door"). I encourage you to explore these nonfiction references.
We hear nene exclaim:
"Nothing I want I can have,” Salvatore says. “Sometimes it seems the only way out…well, I don’t know, Doctor. I would like a husband. I’d like to live normally in an abnormal way."
Ben is remembered today as one of radical Emma Goldman's lovers. His nickname was "the hobo doctor". Martin Scorsese based "Boxcar Bertha" film in 1972 from one of Reitman's books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Rei...
Emma Goldman is worth looking up right now!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Go...
She was a Russian-born anarchist, political activist, and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Jan Gay is indeed the person that got the data for "Sex Variants" started. She started life as Helen Reitman. She became an author, nudism advocate, and founder of the nudist Out-of-Door Club at Highland, New York.
- http://gayhistory.wikidot.com/helen-r...
- https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture...
- https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0310767/bio/
Zhenya Gay (born Eleanor Byrnes) illustrated children's books, using very young Juan as a model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhenya_Gay
Here is a book by this pair:
The Shire Colt by Jan Gay, Zhenya Gay (Illustrator)
e.g. Juan could be the colt.
And more by Jan and Zhenya:
On going naked / by Jan Gay ; with decorations by Zhenya
Pancho and his Burro Zhenya & Jan Gay (Authors & Illustrators)
Both Juan and nene were institutionalized. Juan for a much longer time. This is where they first met (nene at 17, but placed w adults), and bonded.
Juan hails from the previous generation:
the forced institutionalization of our people, whe he called the dark psychohistory of American medicine. He explained how up until 1974, the American Psychiatric Association included homosexuality in the 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders', which Juan referred to as the blblia loca; how to be queer was unequivocally to be insane, in need of cure; and how the 1974 removal of homosexuality form the DSM was so bitterly contested in the psychiatric community that six year later, in 1980, a new diagnosis, 'ego-dystonic homosexuality', was created for the blblia loca's third edition.
Easy 5* for me. One of those books that is deep enough that you just know another reading will yield more.
Be prepared to think. Maybe pause reading (not as much as when reading poetry), but I can't compare this writing to anyone else. There is much to be absorbed.
My favorite part is after about mid-book where they each pretend to tell each other a script for their movie: 'Starve a Rat' by nene. Then 'The Opening of a Door' by Juan. They are blueprints of each of their lives.
There are photocopies of pages from Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns by George W. Henry that have much of the text black-lined so that you can read a variation of what was on that page (erasure poetry). The other blackouts are what nene experiences. There are 55 pictures in this book all with references in the notes in the appendix. Many from the book just mentioned, including pictures of some of the people with that book.
This is the story of 'nene' (baby) who is a generation behind Juan, who was raised by Jan Gay, whose father was Ben Reitman. Jan's partner was Zhenya. Our key narrator, nene, tells much of this story, mostly from the bedside of his dying friend Juan. The other names get mentioned during Juan's story ("The Opening of a Door"). I encourage you to explore these nonfiction references.
We hear nene exclaim:
"Nothing I want I can have,” Salvatore says. “Sometimes it seems the only way out…well, I don’t know, Doctor. I would like a husband. I’d like to live normally in an abnormal way."
Ben is remembered today as one of radical Emma Goldman's lovers. His nickname was "the hobo doctor". Martin Scorsese based "Boxcar Bertha" film in 1972 from one of Reitman's books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Rei...
Emma Goldman is worth looking up right now!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Go...
She was a Russian-born anarchist, political activist, and writer. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
Jan Gay is indeed the person that got the data for "Sex Variants" started. She started life as Helen Reitman. She became an author, nudism advocate, and founder of the nudist Out-of-Door Club at Highland, New York.
- http://gayhistory.wikidot.com/helen-r...
- https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture...
- https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0310767/bio/
Zhenya Gay (born Eleanor Byrnes) illustrated children's books, using very young Juan as a model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhenya_Gay
Here is a book by this pair:
The Shire Colt by Jan Gay, Zhenya Gay (Illustrator)
e.g. Juan could be the colt.
And more by Jan and Zhenya:
On going naked / by Jan Gay ; with decorations by Zhenya
Pancho and his Burro Zhenya & Jan Gay (Authors & Illustrators)
Both Juan and nene were institutionalized. Juan for a much longer time. This is where they first met (nene at 17, but placed w adults), and bonded.
Juan hails from the previous generation:
the forced institutionalization of our people, whe he called the dark psychohistory of American medicine. He explained how up until 1974, the American Psychiatric Association included homosexuality in the 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders', which Juan referred to as the blblia loca; how to be queer was unequivocally to be insane, in need of cure; and how the 1974 removal of homosexuality form the DSM was so bitterly contested in the psychiatric community that six year later, in 1980, a new diagnosis, 'ego-dystonic homosexuality', was created for the blblia loca's third edition.
Easy 5* for me. One of those books that is deep enough that you just know another reading will yield more.
October 24, 2023
I can't connect with the mixed media experiments and the author's pretentious writing. It seems like he is more interested in showcasing his extensive reading and appearing as an artist in torment, rather than creating a genuine connection. It feels like a trompe-l'oeil to me.
November 25, 2023
I have seen this described as an experimental novel. I don’t agree with that label, but it does have some unique characteristics. It has characters based on real-life people but fictionalized. It has what appear to be fictional characters that are presented as real-life, supported with photos and other documentation. And there are studies/publications that play a central role. But at the core of the story there is Juan Gay, an elderly queer who is dying, and the narrator who Juan refers to affectionately as “nene”. Juan and the narrator met approximately 10 years ago in a mental institution. The narrator, who is now 27, was in high school when he spent time in the institution. The narrator has arrived at Juan’s bedside; there is no explanation of what brought the narrator there other than the impression Juan made on him during their brief connection in the past.
As the narrator and Juan share stories of their lives, an intimacy long dormant is renewed. We also learn about the lives of Jan and Zhenya Gay. Jan Gay has invested a good portion of her life accumulating case studies of queers in the hopes of publishing them. What becomes of Jan’s hopes and the life that Jan and Zhenya share is revealed as Juan and the narrator learn more about each other. The novel is filled with references to blackouts and erasure. The intimacy between Juan and the narrator grows stronger but can only be short-lived.
The novel is shown on Goodreads as 306 pages. This is accurate given how Goodreads counts pages but is misleading. There are many pages of photos and other images as well as mostly blank pages that separate sections. Also, many sections are very short. As a result, this is a quick read. This is not criticism, just an FYI. Although I did not feel that I developed strong feelings for any of the characters in the novel, it is a story I will not soon forget. Blackouts won the 2023 National Book Award.
As the narrator and Juan share stories of their lives, an intimacy long dormant is renewed. We also learn about the lives of Jan and Zhenya Gay. Jan Gay has invested a good portion of her life accumulating case studies of queers in the hopes of publishing them. What becomes of Jan’s hopes and the life that Jan and Zhenya share is revealed as Juan and the narrator learn more about each other. The novel is filled with references to blackouts and erasure. The intimacy between Juan and the narrator grows stronger but can only be short-lived.
The novel is shown on Goodreads as 306 pages. This is accurate given how Goodreads counts pages but is misleading. There are many pages of photos and other images as well as mostly blank pages that separate sections. Also, many sections are very short. As a result, this is a quick read. This is not criticism, just an FYI. Although I did not feel that I developed strong feelings for any of the characters in the novel, it is a story I will not soon forget. Blackouts won the 2023 National Book Award.
January 3, 2024
I felt so much smarter after reading this, despite being highly confused the majority of the time, especially the parts in italics about the film...half the time my brain kept saying "idk how we got here but im having a great sophisticated time"
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1735525095i%2F6431467._UX200_CR0%2C11%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
Want to read
November 16, 2023Winner of the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction.
May 14, 2023
It takes a great skill to weave queerness, race, class, gender together with history, medicine, politics, economy, and a great talent to weave these in such a way to tell a story as poignant as this one. However, it takes an artist to produce an artwork, and especially an artwork from the ways various oppressive discourses erase those who appear at the intersection of these aspects of being in the world as the most powerless. I also read it at the same time as Dysphoria Mundi so I was especially attuned to the workings of petro-sexo-racial regime, as Preciado would put it. Being aware of the theoretical side of the story, and Torres while not explicitly referencing Foucault obviously performs a sort of archeology of a particular way of being queer in the world, only intensifies the effect, emotional as well as aesthetical. Beautiful novel.
June 16, 2025
The majority of this book is set in a single room in which two gay men- one young, one dying- talk about, around, and through queer histories. The unlikely pair met years before during a brief overlapping stay in a mental institution. The older, Juan, shares the story of a real-world lesbian researcher, Jan Gay, who helped facilitate a series of interviews with queer people in the 1930s, which later formed the bases of a book titled Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns. Juan has a personal connection with Gay, as well as a copy of Sex Variants, with much of the clinical jargon blacked out to highlight queer people's stories in their own words. Excerpts of these blacked out pages as well as photographs and drawings are included in the text of this book, which is billed as a novel, but clearly contains a strong vein of history. Frankly, I would rather have just read a nonfiction book about Jan Gay's life, or of queer life in the 1930s. The novel elements, formal elements, and history all sat kind of awkwardly side by side for me. I read this in a queer book club, and we were all underwhelmed by it. All of us are aware of the persistent problem of the erasure of queer history; all of us wished the author had taken the themes farther; and all of us had seen more interesting and creative examples of blackout poetry on tumblr or in zines.
August 24, 2023
Major thanks to FSG and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts:
It's the 𝘉𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘯𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦 /𝘉𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘵 for the queer experience, except it isn't romance, but more so faith in friendship between two queer men, one older one younger, one dying one trying to live.
It's everything. Covering class, race, and gender through (what you would call) fictional biography of Jan Gay, someone who I am now interested in but can't seem to find. There are no Goodreads reviews for their book, 𝘖𝘯 𝘎𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘕𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘥. Copies on Ebay are quite expensive, and more information needs to be found on them! I demand it! Not only does the book develop a thick flesh of themes, but it's also a collage of censored transcripts, photographs, and paintings.
It's a beautiful collage of the queer experience that almost feels biblical. That feels holy. That feels like sitting at the back bar stool of Aunt Charlie's, listening to the old days sing with pain and glory, trying and trying to recreate a thing called living to kin off to the next boy trying to find himself.
Deep down, I find difficulties in conveying my queer experience to all my hetero friends. Even with all the media over the past few years, the representation and awareness, it's still hard to relay the shame and fear, the guilt and envy, all of it. This book is a tapestry of that, done with great intricacy and detail.
Some favorite lines:
His eyes burned with life, as if the spirit had left the flesh and concentrated there, in irises bright and glassy, the milk of the whites unsullied. (1)
“What did you say, exactly?” “Something along the lines of, I prefer provocation to pleasure.” “And how did he respond?” “I remember. He says, Probably, you just confuse the two. (15)
I remember it was autumn, and I remember feeling plagued by an unbearable need for both intimacy and estrangement, for the queerness of touch. (28)
it wasn’t that he got me so much as that there was no one he didn’t feel he had. (28)
The point is that every culture has codified ways of expressing overwhelming emotion, panic attacks, nervous breakdowns, ataques de nervios, these are all related to one another. Even in a breakdown, there are cultural codes, behaviors that render the breakdown legible, if not acceptable. You know, I’m sure, the history of the term hysteria?” (34)
“Explaining away the ‘bad father’ and redirecting us toward the ‘good enough father’ is so often one of a mother’s covert responsibilities. (38)
How can you blame a person for needing love?” (53)
“Do you know the difference between a confessor and a martyr?” “Tell me.” “Well, a confessor is persecuted for his faith, tortured, but lives. A martyr is killed.” “Both are saints, is that right?” “I’m not sure it’s automatic; I think it takes some time. It has to do with miracles.” “And the way we choose to remember them?” “The way we choose to forget—the human part.” (78)
I don’t know where he goes, or where time itself goes. (80)
The time is lost … The lost are ever found again…” (89)
You see what I’m getting at, wherever there are facts, those facts are embellished, through both omission and exaggeration, beyond the factual. (90)
It's the 𝘉𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘯𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦 /𝘉𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘵 for the queer experience, except it isn't romance, but more so faith in friendship between two queer men, one older one younger, one dying one trying to live.
It's everything. Covering class, race, and gender through (what you would call) fictional biography of Jan Gay, someone who I am now interested in but can't seem to find. There are no Goodreads reviews for their book, 𝘖𝘯 𝘎𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘕𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘥. Copies on Ebay are quite expensive, and more information needs to be found on them! I demand it! Not only does the book develop a thick flesh of themes, but it's also a collage of censored transcripts, photographs, and paintings.
It's a beautiful collage of the queer experience that almost feels biblical. That feels holy. That feels like sitting at the back bar stool of Aunt Charlie's, listening to the old days sing with pain and glory, trying and trying to recreate a thing called living to kin off to the next boy trying to find himself.
Deep down, I find difficulties in conveying my queer experience to all my hetero friends. Even with all the media over the past few years, the representation and awareness, it's still hard to relay the shame and fear, the guilt and envy, all of it. This book is a tapestry of that, done with great intricacy and detail.
Some favorite lines:
His eyes burned with life, as if the spirit had left the flesh and concentrated there, in irises bright and glassy, the milk of the whites unsullied. (1)
“What did you say, exactly?” “Something along the lines of, I prefer provocation to pleasure.” “And how did he respond?” “I remember. He says, Probably, you just confuse the two. (15)
I remember it was autumn, and I remember feeling plagued by an unbearable need for both intimacy and estrangement, for the queerness of touch. (28)
it wasn’t that he got me so much as that there was no one he didn’t feel he had. (28)
The point is that every culture has codified ways of expressing overwhelming emotion, panic attacks, nervous breakdowns, ataques de nervios, these are all related to one another. Even in a breakdown, there are cultural codes, behaviors that render the breakdown legible, if not acceptable. You know, I’m sure, the history of the term hysteria?” (34)
“Explaining away the ‘bad father’ and redirecting us toward the ‘good enough father’ is so often one of a mother’s covert responsibilities. (38)
How can you blame a person for needing love?” (53)
“Do you know the difference between a confessor and a martyr?” “Tell me.” “Well, a confessor is persecuted for his faith, tortured, but lives. A martyr is killed.” “Both are saints, is that right?” “I’m not sure it’s automatic; I think it takes some time. It has to do with miracles.” “And the way we choose to remember them?” “The way we choose to forget—the human part.” (78)
I don’t know where he goes, or where time itself goes. (80)
The time is lost … The lost are ever found again…” (89)
You see what I’m getting at, wherever there are facts, those facts are embellished, through both omission and exaggeration, beyond the factual. (90)
February 4, 2024
You realise, nene, I’ve forgotten to tell it like a film. I dropped the conceit somewhere along the way.
Winner of the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction and a fascinating choice, a novel that were the author from or living this side of the Atlantic would be a strong Goldsmiths Prize contender, and one that the Booker Prize will hopefully be equally imaginative in recognising.
The novel starts (my underlining):
I came to the Palace because the man I sought kept a room there. He stood at the point of egress, supporting himself against the door frame, not just thin, but skeletal; lips shrunken and chapped; the skin of his face pulled taut over the skull. I led him back to the bed, where he looked at me, kind yet wild. His eyes burned with life, as if the spirit had left the flesh and concentrated there, in irises bright and glassy, the milk of the whites unsullied. His voice, though fey, came hale and lucid, and when he spoke, he did so without obstruction, no wheezing, no confusion (that is, until the final hours, when he slipped into delirium, speaking nonsense and quoting from literature). I told him I would stay, play bed nurse, however long it took. The truth is I had nowhere else to go, and both of us knew as much. Juan insisted that, after his death, I remain in the Palace and take over his room. He asked that I finish the project that had once consumed him, the story of a certain woman who shared his last name. Miss Jan Gay. “Come,” he said with a wink, “squeeze mother’s hands as a sign you will do it.” This was an allusion to some famous scene I could not place; it was not a joke. I took his hands, all knuckles and finger bones, into my own. He was near death, and I would have promised him anything.
“I had never meant to keep my promise. But before I knew it my head began to swim with dreams … What’s that from?”
“I don’t know, Juan. But I will keep this one. I mean to.”
“Some call her one thing, some another,” he said. “Yahn, or Jan, or Helen. Holy fairy, mother of grace. Our Father who art in between.”
Juan Gay is dying in the Palace, a building in the desert, the name, which he has given it, is inspired by a line in the 1980 novel So Long, See You Tomorrow by Wiliam Maxwell, "in the Place at 4.a.m, you walk from one room to the other by going through walls", itself inspired by Alberto Giacometti's 1932 sculpture The Palace at 4 a.m. which the narrator of Maxwell's novel encounters at the MOMA.
Juan has summoned a young man from his past, who he refers to as 'nene', to his deathbed, to pass on his legacy project, an account of the life of the real-life Jan Gay, born Helen Reitman, whose sympathetic interviews with three hundred lesbians in Europe and New York could only be published under the supervision of a male doctor, eventually leading to the book Sex Variants; a Study of Homosexual Patterns under the lead name of George W. Henry. In the fictional world of the novel, the young Juan was adopted by Jan Gay and illustrator Zhenya Gay, indeed becoming the muse for some of the latter's book illustrations.
The two-handed nature of the conversation that follows, particularly as they tell each other stories in the style of a film script, is an explicit borrowing, by both Torres and the fictional characters, from Puig's El beso de la mujer araña (translated as Kiss of the Spider Woman in Alan Baker's translation).
But the allusion, both in Juan's teasing comments (underlined above) and in the style of the account later written by nene of their conversation is a direct and explicit lift from Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo in Margaret Sayers Peden's translation. That book opens:
The novel's most striking visual feature, and one of the reasons for its title, is the inclusion of pages from Sex Variants. with parts of the text blacked-out to form a sort of concrete poem. For example, this page from the original:
becomes in the novel:
Only the latter image being included in the book, the former I sourced from an internet archive copy of the text.
And other photos are included in the novel, sometimes presented as they are, others repurposed in a Sebaldian fashion. And the mixture of fact and fiction in the novel's composition, with Juan inserted into the life of Jan Gay, is typical of the novel's playing with the form. Even the references which attribute various of the photos and literary quotes and allusions come in three version - nene's own story of how he sourced various quotes and discovered the photographs set in the world of the novel, then another afterword from the author of the book proclaiming it as fiction - but this writer is still nene rather than Torres, and finally Torres' own factual and more succinct list of sources. From the middle of those three:
Even where there are undeniably real people named in this book—most significantly Jan and Zhenya Gay—they have become fictional characters, first filtered through Juan's remembrances (who is himself a fictional character, whether or not he existed), and then my own remembering of his remembrances.
The form and meta-fiction is fascinating although for me the story itself rather sagged when focused on Juan and nene, becoming much more interesting when focused on Jan and Zhenya.
And one major bugbear I had, particularly in a novel that centres on the erasure of homosexual lives, stories and authorship, is the erasure of the translators - Margaret Sayers Peden above, elsewhere Bernard Frechtman.
So 5 stars for the literary ambition and a worthy National Book Award but a reluctant 3 (3.5-) stars from me.
Winner of the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction and a fascinating choice, a novel that were the author from or living this side of the Atlantic would be a strong Goldsmiths Prize contender, and one that the Booker Prize will hopefully be equally imaginative in recognising.
The novel starts (my underlining):
I came to the Palace because the man I sought kept a room there. He stood at the point of egress, supporting himself against the door frame, not just thin, but skeletal; lips shrunken and chapped; the skin of his face pulled taut over the skull. I led him back to the bed, where he looked at me, kind yet wild. His eyes burned with life, as if the spirit had left the flesh and concentrated there, in irises bright and glassy, the milk of the whites unsullied. His voice, though fey, came hale and lucid, and when he spoke, he did so without obstruction, no wheezing, no confusion (that is, until the final hours, when he slipped into delirium, speaking nonsense and quoting from literature). I told him I would stay, play bed nurse, however long it took. The truth is I had nowhere else to go, and both of us knew as much. Juan insisted that, after his death, I remain in the Palace and take over his room. He asked that I finish the project that had once consumed him, the story of a certain woman who shared his last name. Miss Jan Gay. “Come,” he said with a wink, “squeeze mother’s hands as a sign you will do it.” This was an allusion to some famous scene I could not place; it was not a joke. I took his hands, all knuckles and finger bones, into my own. He was near death, and I would have promised him anything.
“I had never meant to keep my promise. But before I knew it my head began to swim with dreams … What’s that from?”
“I don’t know, Juan. But I will keep this one. I mean to.”
“Some call her one thing, some another,” he said. “Yahn, or Jan, or Helen. Holy fairy, mother of grace. Our Father who art in between.”
Juan Gay is dying in the Palace, a building in the desert, the name, which he has given it, is inspired by a line in the 1980 novel So Long, See You Tomorrow by Wiliam Maxwell, "in the Place at 4.a.m, you walk from one room to the other by going through walls", itself inspired by Alberto Giacometti's 1932 sculpture The Palace at 4 a.m. which the narrator of Maxwell's novel encounters at the MOMA.
Juan has summoned a young man from his past, who he refers to as 'nene', to his deathbed, to pass on his legacy project, an account of the life of the real-life Jan Gay, born Helen Reitman, whose sympathetic interviews with three hundred lesbians in Europe and New York could only be published under the supervision of a male doctor, eventually leading to the book Sex Variants; a Study of Homosexual Patterns under the lead name of George W. Henry. In the fictional world of the novel, the young Juan was adopted by Jan Gay and illustrator Zhenya Gay, indeed becoming the muse for some of the latter's book illustrations.
The two-handed nature of the conversation that follows, particularly as they tell each other stories in the style of a film script, is an explicit borrowing, by both Torres and the fictional characters, from Puig's El beso de la mujer araña (translated as Kiss of the Spider Woman in Alan Baker's translation).
But the allusion, both in Juan's teasing comments (underlined above) and in the style of the account later written by nene of their conversation is a direct and explicit lift from Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo in Margaret Sayers Peden's translation. That book opens:
I came to Comala because I had been told that my father, a man named Pedro Paramo lived there. It was my mother who told me. And I had promised her that after she died I would go see him. I squeezed her hands as a sign I would do it. She was near death, and I would have promised her anything. "Don't fail to go see him," she had insisted. "Some call him one thing, some another. I'm sure he will want to know you." At the time all I could do was tell her I would do what she asked, and from promising so often I kept repeating the promise even after I had pulled my hands free of her death grip.
Still earlier she had told me:
"Don't ask him for anything. Just what's ours. What he should have given me but never did ... Make him pay, son, for all those years he put us out of his mind."
"I will, Mother."
I never meant to keep my promise. But before I knew it my head began to swim with dreams and my imagination took flight. Little by little I began to build a world around a hope centered on the man called Pedro Paramo, the man who had been my mother's husband.
The novel's most striking visual feature, and one of the reasons for its title, is the inclusion of pages from Sex Variants. with parts of the text blacked-out to form a sort of concrete poem. For example, this page from the original:
becomes in the novel:
Only the latter image being included in the book, the former I sourced from an internet archive copy of the text.
And other photos are included in the novel, sometimes presented as they are, others repurposed in a Sebaldian fashion. And the mixture of fact and fiction in the novel's composition, with Juan inserted into the life of Jan Gay, is typical of the novel's playing with the form. Even the references which attribute various of the photos and literary quotes and allusions come in three version - nene's own story of how he sourced various quotes and discovered the photographs set in the world of the novel, then another afterword from the author of the book proclaiming it as fiction - but this writer is still nene rather than Torres, and finally Torres' own factual and more succinct list of sources. From the middle of those three:
Even where there are undeniably real people named in this book—most significantly Jan and Zhenya Gay—they have become fictional characters, first filtered through Juan's remembrances (who is himself a fictional character, whether or not he existed), and then my own remembering of his remembrances.
The form and meta-fiction is fascinating although for me the story itself rather sagged when focused on Juan and nene, becoming much more interesting when focused on Jan and Zhenya.
And one major bugbear I had, particularly in a novel that centres on the erasure of homosexual lives, stories and authorship, is the erasure of the translators - Margaret Sayers Peden above, elsewhere Bernard Frechtman.
So 5 stars for the literary ambition and a worthy National Book Award but a reluctant 3 (3.5-) stars from me.
January 22, 2025
3.5
this book has some profound things to say about queer history, black history, hispanic history and its erasure. this book is also really funny at times. But I will say many moment while reading I was confused as hell and maybe even sometimes bored. The writing is exceptional even if a little self indulgent at times.
this book has some profound things to say about queer history, black history, hispanic history and its erasure. this book is also really funny at times. But I will say many moment while reading I was confused as hell and maybe even sometimes bored. The writing is exceptional even if a little self indulgent at times.
August 4, 2023
Blackouts is so brilliant that it's occupied all my shower-thinking-time for a week, but whenever I try to tell people (everyone...I've been telling everyone) what it's about, I can't quite do it. Not wholly. And this fundamental failure at communication is perhaps the most honest representation of Justin Torres's new novel, which traces a queer history that is necessarily and purposefully incomplete, which tries to "undo erasure through more erasure." Blackout poetry is a useful reference point, both in terms of the novel’s structure and in terms of its content. Torres intersperses narrative with partially blacked-out pages from Sex Variants, a study of homosexuality published in 1941, and the novel itself makes an argument for the way that storytelling is always an act of focus, of emphasis and elision rather than faithful reproduction. (Side note: I want someone to put this book on a syllabus with After Sappho, and then I want to take that class.)
The novel is essentially a prolonged conversation between two queer men: one dying, one witnessing. The stories they take turns telling each other are from their lives and the lives of others, and they jump through time, space, and genre depending on the desire of the listener. The result is a kind of queer archive, with historical figures, literary references, and images woven together with personal narrative, including Torres's own previously published writing. Nothing feels quite finished, but that's the point: the collage is closer to truth than a resolution could be. Blackouts is queer history that queers history, and it's perfect.
Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC!
The novel is essentially a prolonged conversation between two queer men: one dying, one witnessing. The stories they take turns telling each other are from their lives and the lives of others, and they jump through time, space, and genre depending on the desire of the listener. The result is a kind of queer archive, with historical figures, literary references, and images woven together with personal narrative, including Torres's own previously published writing. Nothing feels quite finished, but that's the point: the collage is closer to truth than a resolution could be. Blackouts is queer history that queers history, and it's perfect.
Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC!
February 24, 2025
WTF
I started this book with no clue what it was about. (It is a thing I am doing right now. Do not read the back cover. Do not read reviews. Go in with an open mind, read the book, and then read all that stuff.) Halfway through and I had a vague idea, but was very unsure why it was written the way it was written. By the end I was extremely disappointed. The writing style fell flat, the characters were blah, and the story was all over the place. I looked up the Amazon review when I finished it, and it told me more about the book than actually reading it did.
Final thoughts:
I want to know more about Jan Gray and the book that was referenced.
What 45 years of living has taught me: Winning an award is not a guarantee of excellence. Do not blindly trust shiny gold stickers.
One star to a book that left a lot to be desired.
A QUOTE:
“My hunch is that Mad Man gave that dog up. Either that or he finally broke her. Anyway, she’s old now, or else she’s dead. But I have this fantasy that she’s still chewing up the living room, still slamming against the limits of that cage, only now she’s vocalized, yapping and howling, and it’s a kind of music, and the whole neighborhood can hear her frustration and understand. And the song is a lament, something camp and bluesy, about how there ain’t no shame in being a bitch, but, Lord, be a bitch that barks.”
I started this book with no clue what it was about. (It is a thing I am doing right now. Do not read the back cover. Do not read reviews. Go in with an open mind, read the book, and then read all that stuff.) Halfway through and I had a vague idea, but was very unsure why it was written the way it was written. By the end I was extremely disappointed. The writing style fell flat, the characters were blah, and the story was all over the place. I looked up the Amazon review when I finished it, and it told me more about the book than actually reading it did.
Final thoughts:
I want to know more about Jan Gray and the book that was referenced.
What 45 years of living has taught me: Winning an award is not a guarantee of excellence. Do not blindly trust shiny gold stickers.
One star to a book that left a lot to be desired.
A QUOTE:
“My hunch is that Mad Man gave that dog up. Either that or he finally broke her. Anyway, she’s old now, or else she’s dead. But I have this fantasy that she’s still chewing up the living room, still slamming against the limits of that cage, only now she’s vocalized, yapping and howling, and it’s a kind of music, and the whole neighborhood can hear her frustration and understand. And the song is a lament, something camp and bluesy, about how there ain’t no shame in being a bitch, but, Lord, be a bitch that barks.”
October 15, 2023
Difficult to know how to rate a book that I wish I'd read the "Sort of Postface" first then read the novel. I (sort of) want to re-read the book again immediately. If you are an inveterate Googler I'd suggest you read an excellent interview with Justin Torres in NPR before you start the book. It will make it much clearer and explain his process in bringing Jan Gay's name into the limelight.
Blackouts is a work of fiction but it is inhabited by various real people - Jan Gay (a pseudonym of Helen Reitman) being the main one. It is the story of a remarkable woman told by Juan Gay (a dying man) to an unnamed young man.
The lines between reality and fiction are completely blurred in this work. I reached the end and still wasn't sure whether Juan was real or not. The style of the novel is a mixture of conversation, pictures, cuttings etc and if you don't like experimental you may find it difficult but it is worth it. What you end up with is some information on Jan Gay and her work but also a very sensitively told story of a dying man.
I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in the subject of homosexual history or Jan Gay or anyone (like me) who enjoys a "different" type of novel - something that makes you think.
Thanks to Netgalley and Granta for the advance review copy.
Blackouts is a work of fiction but it is inhabited by various real people - Jan Gay (a pseudonym of Helen Reitman) being the main one. It is the story of a remarkable woman told by Juan Gay (a dying man) to an unnamed young man.
The lines between reality and fiction are completely blurred in this work. I reached the end and still wasn't sure whether Juan was real or not. The style of the novel is a mixture of conversation, pictures, cuttings etc and if you don't like experimental you may find it difficult but it is worth it. What you end up with is some information on Jan Gay and her work but also a very sensitively told story of a dying man.
I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in the subject of homosexual history or Jan Gay or anyone (like me) who enjoys a "different" type of novel - something that makes you think.
Thanks to Netgalley and Granta for the advance review copy.
June 18, 2024
I've seen this book described as "experimental." Unfortunately this experiment did not work for me. There is barely any plot to this story. A young gay man is having conversations with an old, dying gay man named Juan in "The Palace". Together, they recollect the past, queer history and the people Juan knew. The structure is broken into many pieces and I found it hard to follow this story. The book won the National Book Award, but I found it to be messy and poorly written. I had no expectations going into this book, so I can't say that I'm disappointed; I'm just a bit underwhelmed.
February 24, 2024
One day I’ll learn not to read a book just because it won an award.
September 27, 2023
3.5 — This was a really good book that blurs our understanding of what fiction can be. Torres throws a lot of really interesting themes in the air with the craft of a great writer — stories, storytelling, modes and formats of stories, oral storytelling, passing down stories from generation to generation, what stories are told and which ones are revised or lost — all of this through a queer focused lens. This was a novel both historical and contemporary in scope and vision. I was entranced by this and I LOVE books that make me think as deeply as this one did.
That being said, I will say at times I was equally as lost in the prose (in the confused kind of way) and I found that to be disorienting and not as enjoyable as I’d hoped it would be. A lot of the dialogue between Juan and our unnamed narrator sometimes didn’t work for me either and it took me out of the reading experience whereas I wanted to very much be actually lost in it (in the absorbed kind of way). This was just my experience with it but overall it was a pretty impressive work and I’m really glad I read it.
That being said, I will say at times I was equally as lost in the prose (in the confused kind of way) and I found that to be disorienting and not as enjoyable as I’d hoped it would be. A lot of the dialogue between Juan and our unnamed narrator sometimes didn’t work for me either and it took me out of the reading experience whereas I wanted to very much be actually lost in it (in the absorbed kind of way). This was just my experience with it but overall it was a pretty impressive work and I’m really glad I read it.
October 29, 2023
Justin Torres's Blackouts is currently a finalist for the National Book Award. It is the most innovative, evocative and intelligent novel I have read this year and would be a worthy winner of the award or any other prizes that come its way. I debated a five star rating as it is unquestioningly excellent, but found that my admiration for what Torres' accomplished was greater than my actual reading enjoyment.
December 11, 2023
Wrote this for my book club because they were a bit confused. Included some quotes from other reviews and articles.
Blackouts is the 2023 National Book Award winning novel by Justin Torres. Prior to becoming a UCLA Professor, Torres worked at a used bookstore in San Francisco and discovered a shelf with several copies of the book “Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns” published in 1941 which examined the lives of 40 gay men and lesbian women. Torres had complicated feelings about the study, which offered a glimpse into how the scientific community tried to understand queer people while alienating and dehumanizing them within the much forgotten, and erased, history that homosexuality was considered a severe mental illness until 1974.
So Torres decided to perform his own erasure, crossing out the science/pathology language from “Sex Variants” keeping only the human aspects. It ended up resulting in a story of its own. The heavily redacted text is what’s known as “erasure poetry” – a double-entendre on the erasure of the scientific text, of queer history, and a tribute to the forgotten trail blazers featured in the book.
Blackouts is based on true story of how research by and about gay people in the first half of the 20th century was co-opted and deformed by the straight medical establishment and contributed to the institutionalization of gay people.
It is equal parts history lesson and fictional fever dream, interwoven with a prolonged conversation between two gay men, one dying and one witnessing. Despite most of the book taking place in a pitch-black room, it jumps through time, space, and genre. The fictional storyline is purposefully incomplete to complement the overarching non-fiction theme of erasure.
Written in the form of oral storytelling, remembrances filtered through multiple sources, including the narrator, is an examination of how queer history itself has survived despite erasure, distortion, and oppression.
There are no plot twists; there is no rising action, climax, or falling action; as such Torres makes up for it with stop-readers-in-their-tracks prose sprinkled throughout the meandering storyline, and a shifty experimental structure like having the characters tell each other about their stories in the format of a movie script, “Starve a Rat” by Nene and “The Opening Door” by Juan.
I found the gaps in the character development to be endearing. We don’t know exactly why Juan and Nene were institutionalized. We don’t know how or why Nene reunited with Juan. We don’t even know Nene’s real name. We don't have to! The story dives headfirst into "Blackouts" both literally and figuratively as Torres beautifully crafts a literary nod to the art of traditional oral storytelling--showing readers that it is an act of focus and elision, NOT faithful reproduction that they expect replicated over and over again in modern fiction. I found this to be startlingly realistic, how all that you truly know about others in your life is the stitched together view of the stories and experiences they’ve shared or you’ve shared together, but never a true holistic view.
To me, this book was deeply personal and introspective. It was a reminder and appreciation of the pain people just like me faced in the past. It painted a startling dichotomy of the values of today’s generation of queer people and our lack of understanding (and desire of understanding) of our own history due to the multitude of erasures—our own generational Blackouts. It brought up contemplation on aging, the erasure of the elderly from our culture, my own relationships and fears surrounding aging and death, my own challenges with mental illness. It brought up the hypersexualization of gay culture and trauma's relationship with sex in gay culture. It’s a book about compassion for self and compassion for strangers, compassion for the old, respect for the stories of others. It’s about legacy and the importance of carrying down stories, and the lost art of generational traditional storytelling, especially in the queer community. A book that paused time for me whenever I was in it.
Blackouts is the 2023 National Book Award winning novel by Justin Torres. Prior to becoming a UCLA Professor, Torres worked at a used bookstore in San Francisco and discovered a shelf with several copies of the book “Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns” published in 1941 which examined the lives of 40 gay men and lesbian women. Torres had complicated feelings about the study, which offered a glimpse into how the scientific community tried to understand queer people while alienating and dehumanizing them within the much forgotten, and erased, history that homosexuality was considered a severe mental illness until 1974.
So Torres decided to perform his own erasure, crossing out the science/pathology language from “Sex Variants” keeping only the human aspects. It ended up resulting in a story of its own. The heavily redacted text is what’s known as “erasure poetry” – a double-entendre on the erasure of the scientific text, of queer history, and a tribute to the forgotten trail blazers featured in the book.
Blackouts is based on true story of how research by and about gay people in the first half of the 20th century was co-opted and deformed by the straight medical establishment and contributed to the institutionalization of gay people.
It is equal parts history lesson and fictional fever dream, interwoven with a prolonged conversation between two gay men, one dying and one witnessing. Despite most of the book taking place in a pitch-black room, it jumps through time, space, and genre. The fictional storyline is purposefully incomplete to complement the overarching non-fiction theme of erasure.
Written in the form of oral storytelling, remembrances filtered through multiple sources, including the narrator, is an examination of how queer history itself has survived despite erasure, distortion, and oppression.
There are no plot twists; there is no rising action, climax, or falling action; as such Torres makes up for it with stop-readers-in-their-tracks prose sprinkled throughout the meandering storyline, and a shifty experimental structure like having the characters tell each other about their stories in the format of a movie script, “Starve a Rat” by Nene and “The Opening Door” by Juan.
I found the gaps in the character development to be endearing. We don’t know exactly why Juan and Nene were institutionalized. We don’t know how or why Nene reunited with Juan. We don’t even know Nene’s real name. We don't have to! The story dives headfirst into "Blackouts" both literally and figuratively as Torres beautifully crafts a literary nod to the art of traditional oral storytelling--showing readers that it is an act of focus and elision, NOT faithful reproduction that they expect replicated over and over again in modern fiction. I found this to be startlingly realistic, how all that you truly know about others in your life is the stitched together view of the stories and experiences they’ve shared or you’ve shared together, but never a true holistic view.
To me, this book was deeply personal and introspective. It was a reminder and appreciation of the pain people just like me faced in the past. It painted a startling dichotomy of the values of today’s generation of queer people and our lack of understanding (and desire of understanding) of our own history due to the multitude of erasures—our own generational Blackouts. It brought up contemplation on aging, the erasure of the elderly from our culture, my own relationships and fears surrounding aging and death, my own challenges with mental illness. It brought up the hypersexualization of gay culture and trauma's relationship with sex in gay culture. It’s a book about compassion for self and compassion for strangers, compassion for the old, respect for the stories of others. It’s about legacy and the importance of carrying down stories, and the lost art of generational traditional storytelling, especially in the queer community. A book that paused time for me whenever I was in it.
December 31, 2023
Superb!
February 15, 2024
There is a common thread running through friends' reviews of this award-winning work of metafiction, to the effect that it is easier to admire than to enjoy. I wholeheartedly agree and would merely replace "admire" with "appreciate".
It's not difficult to see what Torres is doing in Blackouts. He provides a lot of road signs in the form of commentary, explanatory asides, illustration credits, Blinkered Endnotes, and A Sort of Postface. Those Blinkered Endnotes are quite illuminating and among my favorite parts of the book; the Postface is the literary equivalent of a criminal wiping away the last of their fingerprints before leaving the scene. For all these supports, however, there is more than a minor sense of autoeroticism about the whole affair. As should be the case, the author is very much enamored of his creation.
I did find it odd that Juan Rulfo's surrealist novel, Pedro Paramo, receives only a glancing reference in Endnote 7,21. It may not have influenced Torres quite as much as it did Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but the hallucinatory, younger-man-in-search-of-father-figure narrative of Blackouts is more than a mere echo of its more legendary predecessor.
3.5 stars
It's not difficult to see what Torres is doing in Blackouts. He provides a lot of road signs in the form of commentary, explanatory asides, illustration credits, Blinkered Endnotes, and A Sort of Postface. Those Blinkered Endnotes are quite illuminating and among my favorite parts of the book; the Postface is the literary equivalent of a criminal wiping away the last of their fingerprints before leaving the scene. For all these supports, however, there is more than a minor sense of autoeroticism about the whole affair. As should be the case, the author is very much enamored of his creation.
I did find it odd that Juan Rulfo's surrealist novel, Pedro Paramo, receives only a glancing reference in Endnote 7,21. It may not have influenced Torres quite as much as it did Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but the hallucinatory, younger-man-in-search-of-father-figure narrative of Blackouts is more than a mere echo of its more legendary predecessor.
3.5 stars
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